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June 9, 2013 Removable Section III

In this post I'm working on the basic scenery remodel. The first picture shows a Plaster of Paris rock being held in place while the Paper Mache Glue dries. I used a thin coat of Paper Mache to attach the rock to the plywood frame. The Plaster of Paris was still damp from the mold so Paper Mache works very good as a glue because both will dry together in the same time period.I used a Woodland Scenics mold to cast the rock then cut the casting at the proper angle to mate the mountain. I used the remaining cut off pieces to extend the rock for the needed length to fill the space.Several weeks back I added a level space on my main layout for my Chalet, that in turn created the need for this new rock so that the removable section would mate up to the Chalet ground level.The picture above is titled "What a Mess", this is a typical construction area when I'm working on something. I decided to replace the Grandt No Problem Joe's house or what I call my Retired Miners House with a Campbell Craftsman Kit #381 Farm House. It fits in much better with my other three scratch built Catalog Homes. The new house is a bit bigger than the Grandt house so I had to call in the dirt contractor to remove a chunk of the mountain. That caused a need for another rock to replace the chunk of mountain that I removed. You can see the added Plaster of Paris rock used as a filler behind the new house. As you can see I have done some preliminarily adjustments to see how things will fit the changes. I also added a small scratch built garage for the Miner's pickup or tractor. I also needed to rearrange the power lines to fit the new houses.The new rock came out very nice and it matches the original rocks.Here I have cleaned up my mess and finished staining all the rocks with Woodland Scenics Burnt Umber #C1222, Black C1220 and covering the new Paper Mache with several coats of Earth Undercoat #C1229.

I have also added the tall pine tree mounts, the white spots in the grassy areas are half inch long Plastruct #90106 Tubing glued into ¼" holes. It is ¼" OD with an ⅛" ID, the Woodland Scenics TR1106 Tall Pine Conifer Trees have a ⅛" mounting stud on the bottom of the trunk and fits perfect in the tubing. I error-ed badly by not using the tree mounts provided with the Woodland Scenics Trees when I originally built my layout. By using a plugin type base the trees are easily removable for maintenance. Now all of my 500 trees are removable

My First HO Locomotive

Way back in the fall of 1952 I bought my first HO Locomotive, it was a MDC/Model Roundhouse 0-6-0 Switch Engine Kit, I still have it and it is still in prefect condition. It cost $6.85 back then, I used my Newspaper Route money to purchase it from H&H Hobby Shop in El Paso Texas.

My Greatest Railroad Treasure

It's a Fawcett Book Number 133, it cost 45¢ in 1951. That was a lot of money in 1951, a 24 bottle case of Cokes was 65¢ back then. There is an article starting on page 28 on John Allen's railroad, there is only 4 pages on his layout but I was hooked on HO scale from that day on.

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